in fact it is not either-or, as once you mange to truly follow this dictum and be there for your patient, admitting your (and your profession's) abilities and dissabilities, and becoming true partners in fighting disease, then there are very few things that can lead to such a feeling of satisfaction.

this is from a book about Hippocrates -

Medicine must try to preserve or restore the supreme good and divine: health. "Health, the most venerable of the blessed divinities, would that I might pass the rest of my life with thee! … if there is in fact, any charm in wealth , or in children, or in the royal power that makes man equal to a god…that everything flourishes, that the company of the graces shine; but without thee, there is no happiness."
The lofty ideals of the Hippocratic treatise are altogether exemplary; and on the relationship between the physician and the patient, their humanity is also quite exceptional. And so it is not surprising that, having first made a deep impression upon contemporaries, they should have become the bible of the physician over the succeeding centuries. In our days, despite progress of medical sciences, which has once and for all turned its back on Hippocrates, they still possess a freshness… they offer rich grounds for reflection for anyone who wishes to become acquainted with the earliest roots of humanism.
The Hippocratic message concerning the foundation on which rest the relations between physician and patient may be summed up in a famous maxim: "as to disease, make a habit of two things- to help, or at least do no harm." Here Hippocrates clearly asserts that the purpose of medicine is to protect the interests of the patient. But the physician's unique point of view serves to lend nuance to what was to become a more dogmatic position with the philosophers. Because the injunction to "do good" represents an ideal that the physician cannot always attain, he adds "or at least do no harm" failing to be useful, the physician must not worsen a patient's condition through an untimely intervention.

The dialogue between the physician and the patient:
… The originality of the Hippocratic manner of speaking lay elsewhere. It consisted in initiating a dialogue with the patient for the purpose of collecting information about the diagnosis or prognosis of the illness, or the course of treatment… to know how to question a patient was indispensable, but it was also necessary to know how to listen…the patient's response served as a guide for the physician in the course of treatment-but only on the condition that the physician knew how to interpret it. Where he did, an attentive dialogue came to be established that marked the beginning of authentic partnership between physician and patient in fighting illness. "The art had three factors, the disease, the patient and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art. The patient must co-operate with the physician in combating the disease."

alice